Last week, learning technologists, instructional designers, educators, and administrators from across the U.S. and Canada came together on Panopto’s home turf of Seattle for Focus 2019, our annual North American User Conference. 

It was a chance for Panopto users to network with each other, and an opportunity for us to learn how we can better support applications for video in colleges and universities of all sizes. Attendees also had the opportunity to learn about other video technologies that they can use along with Panopto to help manage and scale video capture setups and workflows in our partner expo.

A special shout out to this year’s Focus partners: 3PlayMedia, Cielo24, Epiphan Video, Extron, Magewell, Matrox, Rev, Seneca, Shuttle, and Verbit.

For those who couldn’t make it or for anyone considering attending next year, we thought we’d share the highlights from this year’s two-day event.

Panopto Focus 2019: Day 1

Opening Keynote: Influencing Change to Support Innovation

Presented by Dave Cormier

In the opening keynote to Focus 2019, Dave Cormier presented his strategies for leading complex change initiatives and getting buy-in from others in the organization to enact real change that supports innovation. 

Cormier used his experience teaching instructors about ‘open pedagogy,’ noting a common theme: Everyone comes into learning with their own experiences. And in introducing someone to something new and complex, we have to cultivate learning — giving our audience the tools they need to go out and find answers for themselves. This, in turn, gives us a common language in which to collaborate and move the conversation forward, implementing solutions that work for everyone.

Day 1 Breakout Sessions

Across six breakout sessions throughout the day, ten power users and two of Panopto’s lead developers presented a variety of ways to use video for enhancing teaching and learning on campus. 

Presenters from Creighton University, University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, Seminole State College of Florida, UNLV, Duke University, and Durham University led sessions that covered tips for working smarter, integrating and automating lecture capture in campus classrooms, live streaming, customizing workflows with Panopto’s developer API, and one surprising strategy for meeting student demands for lecture recording — automatically opting all courses in to lecture capture.

Direct from the Experts: Panopto Engineering Presents

In the last session of the day, Panopto’s lead engineers provided attendees with an inside look at the latest updates to our platform. Meghal Patel explained our approach to product development and how customer feedback drives our roadmap. Zac Rumford discussed the new retention policy in the May 2019 Release of Panopto and how administrators can best implement it to manage video content. Mark Brewster then covered new analytics features and capabilities, and Hiroshi Ohno closed out by walking through course copy and how it works with different LMS integrations. 

Panopto Focus 2019: Day 2

Opening Keynote: Focus on the Future

Presented by Eric Burns, CEO & Co-Founder, Panopto

In his morning keynote, Panopto’s CEO and Co-Founder Eric Burns reflected on where we’ve come with video technology and where we’ll go in the future when the constraints to using video in education are not infrastructure or cost, but only the desire to create content.

Driven partly by evolving teaching methodologies and partly by demand from students who have grown up learning from online videos, more than 4 in 5 American colleges and universities now use lecture capture technology to some degree. And there is one underlying factor that has cemented video in the technology stack of nearly every educational institution: 

Video continues to become easier and more flexible, thus breaking down barriers to using the medium to support any pedagogy.

Burns expanded on five major trends that have brought video to ubiquity in higher education:

So what happens next? 

As video technologies continue to innovate and adapt to the changing needs of universities, Burns said we need only look at the explosion of video on campuses when they start using Panopto to understand what comes next. 

In a world where video is easy and flexible, the floodgates open — the number of hours of video streamed on a single campus in a year can hit the millions. And the exponential growth in Panopto usage over the last six years is proof further proof that video learning is more than a fad. 

Today, there are more than 300 years of videos streamed through Panopto every single month by Panopto customers. As we continue to build a platform that makes video even easier, the exponential growth in video usage will undoubtedly continue.

Focus attendees got a sneak preview of how Panopto plans to simplify video capture and management even more, but you’ll have to stay tuned to find out!

Day 2 Breakout Sessions

In our second day of breakout sessions, panelists from the University of Washington, William and Mary, UCSD, DePaul University, and Georgetown University presented their experiences with integrating Panopto with different learning management systems (LMSs), simplifying workflows and improving adoption with automated recording, and getting buy-in for new technologies on campus.

General Session: Leadership and Being A Change Agent

Presented by Cara Lyn Giovanniello, University of California, Berkeley

When education isn’t as supported as we’d like it to be, working in the field of higher ed can feel extra challenging as we have to work harder and harder to deliver the best possible solutions for teaching and learning. And while today’s technologies may make modernizing the ways we do things easier and more efficient, we tend to remain stuck with too few resources and not enough time to make real progress when we can’t create alliances with the people we need to help implement new ideas. 

Getting buy-in for new ideas starts with being a leader and building strong partnerships that create a ripple effect for change. That means that it’s more important than ever for us to leverage and develop our leadership skills in order to achieve success — for our students, our faculty, our institutions, and in our own careers. 

Cara Lyn Giovanniello, a Learning and Development Manager at UC Berkeley, led Panopto Focus attendees through actionable steps they can all take towards becoming effective agents of change. From active listening to knowing yourself and what you stand for, Giovanniello shared her best advice for working with colleagues to develop a common vision that moves ideas forward.

Panopto Roadmap

Not only did user conference attendees get a sneak peek of our product roadmap, but they also got to put our VP of Product Engineering, Tim Sullivan, on the spot with questions about features they are most looking forward to and the capabilities they hope to see in Panopto. Sullivan covered a long list of projects we’re working on, so check the hashtag on Twitter for others that might have leaked out: #Focus19. Or ask your Panopto Customer Success Advocate!

We’ll Be Back Next Year!

If you didn’t get to join us at Focus 2019, our North American User Conference, we hope you can join us next year. And for those of you who are not yet Panopto users, there’s still plenty of time to become one. You can start by seeing what all the hype is about by signing up for a free trial.